The Damned eBook

We were left delightfully to ourselves in this pretentious
country mansion with the soul of a villa. Frances
took up her painting again, and, the weather being
propitious, spent hours out of doors, sketching flowers,
trees and nooks of woodland, garden, even the house
itself where bits of it peered suggestively across
the orchards. Mrs. Franklyn seemed always busy
about something or other, and never interfered with
us except to propose motoring, tea in another part
of the lawn, and so forth. She flitted everywhere,
preoccupied, yet apparently doing nothing. The
house engulfed her rather. No visitor called.
For one thing, she was not supposed to be back from
abroad yet; and for another, I think, the neighborhood—­her
husband’s neighborhood—­was puzzled
by her sudden cessation from good works. Brigades
and temperance societies did not ask to hold their
meetings in the big hall, and the vicar arranged the
school-treats in another’s field without explanation.
The full-length portrait in the dining room, and the
presence of the housekeeper with the “burnt”
back hair, indeed, were the only reminders of the
man who once had lived here. Mrs. Marsh retained
her place in silence, well-paid sinecure as it doubtless
was, yet with no hint of that suppressed disapproval
one might have expected from her. Indeed there
was nothing positive to disapprove, since nothing “worldly”
entered grounds or building. In her master’s
lifetime she had been another “brand snatched
from the burning,” and it had then been her
custom to give vociferous “testimony” at
the revival meetings where he adorned the platform
and led in streams of prayer. I saw her sometimes
on the stairs, hovering, wandering, half-watching and
half-listening, and the idea came to me once that
this woman somehow formed a link with the departed
influence of her bigoted employer. She, alone
among us, belonged to the house, and looked at home
there. When I saw her talking —­oh,
with such correct and respectful mien—­to
Mrs. Franklyn, I had the feeling that for all her
unaggressive attitude, she yet exerted some influence
that sought to make her mistress stay in the building
forever —­live there. She would prevent
her escape, prevent “getting it straight again,”
thwart somehow her will to freedom, if she could.
The idea in me was of the most fleeting kind.
But another time, when I came down late at night to
get a book from the library antechamber, and found
her sitting in the hall—­alone—­the
impression left upon me was the reverse of fleeting.
I can never forget the vivid, disagreeable effect it
produced upon me. What was she doing there at
half-past eleven at night, all alone in the darkness?
She was sitting upright, stiff, in a big chair below
the clock. It gave me a turn. It was so incongruous
and odd. She rose quietly as I turned the corner
of the stairs, and asked me respectfully, her eyes
cast down as usual, whether I had finished with the
library, so that she might lock up. There was
no more to it than that; but the picture stayed with
me—­unpleasantly.